| A music-hall star—“They want me to sing standin’ on me head!”—Singers and sharks—a handful of bad money—The Canadian and the bold gendarme—Marie stars at French races—Nearly gets thrown out. |
Sunday, October 13th 1901—Steaming down the China coast in a P. and O. boat. Admiral Curzon Home is on board; apparently a mild-mannered sea-dog, for, like Bret Harte’s “Thompson the hero of Angels,” he is always polite to the stranger. But they say that, when he gets really warmed to his work, neither Cicero nor Demosthenes could have taught him anything in the way of rugged eloquence.
An English major on board is returning from China to his duties in India, where he is in charge of the establishment of a young rajah. He is allowed to spend ten thousand a year as a sort of amusement fund to provide polo ponies, entertain visitors, preserve tigers, and to keep up a cricket team—all with the object of sweating the lust and licentiousness out of the young rajah. The Admiral says that he is sorry that he himself ever went to sea—he didn’t know there were such jobs in the world! This young rajah has only one wife up to the present; but all his wife’s waiting maids are his concubines, and when visiting his wife he picks out a good-looking waiting maid for future reference. He comes of a boozing and womanizing strain, so the major makes him slog into polo and cricket and shooting. About fourteen tigers are shot in a year, and the visitor can either shoot from a machan (a platform in a tree) which is perfectly safe; or, if he wants some excitement, he can shoot from an elephant, where the main risk is that the elephant may pull him off and use him as a stepping-stone over boggy ground; or, if he is a genuine dyed-in-the-wool thruster, he can go out on foot with his ride and walk up a tiger in the jungle.
Like many others of the high-caste Indians, this young rajah was a natural horseman, and in two years he and the major, between them, turned out a polo team that won the championship of India. Some of these Orientals have an instinct for horses. A sultan near Singapore went in for racing, mostly with walers, and took to the game so naturally that he ran an old performer as a maiden horse; was detected, and fired out of the Singapore club. It is an education to see polo played by a native Indian team. Good horsemen, with very flexible wrists, they keep the ball in control and pass to each other almost as accurately as fieldsmen will throw a cricket-ball to one another.
At Singapore the great music-hall star, Marie Lloyd, joined the ship. A very virile lady, this, if one may use the word; a Juno of a woman, with the physique of a ploughman, a great broad face, and eyes very wide apart. She walks into a room as a dreadnought steams into a harbour, followed by a fleet of smaller vessels in the shape of sycophants and hangers-on. Her conversation consists mostly of epigram and innuendo. For instance, a lady passenger, travelling by herself, has her belongings shifted across the ship to a new cabin every time that the wind changes, and there is talk of favouritism:
“Ho, what are yer goin’ to do about it,” says Marie. “She sits at the purser’s table, don’t she?”
A wealthy Greek passenger—quite an old man—is always hanging round a very pretty young girl, who is one of Marie’s entourage. Then his attentions cease abruptly. After dinner one night Marie gives me the key to the situation:
“That old Greek,” she says. “Do you know what he had the cheek to do? Did you ever hear anything like it? He wanted to take the little girl a trip with him through Egypt, the old vagabond!”
“And what did you say to him?” I ask, confident that Marie must have said something worthy of the occasion.
“What did I say to him? ‘Let’s see your cheque-book,’ I says. That’s what I said to him.”
Apparently the cheque-book failed to materialize, for Marie, in her primitive way, carried on a sort of vendetta against the Greek; and when a parrot, belonging to a passenger, flew overboard, she saw her chance. Beckoning to one of her hangers-on, she said:
“You go to the old Greek and say: ‘What a pity that bird flew overboard! It was Hurley’s bird, wasn’t it?’ And I’ll come along and say: ‘No, it was the little bad-tempered one that the butcher looks after.’ That’s the Greek’s bird, and he won’t sleep a bloody wink thinkin’ his bird has flew over!”
Some officers’ wives from India asked a solitary male passenger if he would mind moving a few places up the table, so that they could sit together; and Marie had a few words to say on that subject.
“They asked yer to change ger seat, did they? Well, a thing like that would kill me dead, that would—stone dead. D’yer know what I’d ha’ said to ’em? I’d ha’ said, ‘Excuse me, but perhaps when you come out before you must have came in the steerage. You ain’t used to travellin’ first-class saloon.’ That’s what I’d ha’ said.”
Learning that I am some sort of literary person, Marie asks me to write her a song, and adds that she has paid as much as a pound and thirty bob for some of her song hits in London. Then she lets her eye rove over the deck where the passengers are walking in pairs, male and female, as the Lord created them.
“There you are,” she says, “all you want is a good ketchline! What about ‘They’ve all got their little bit o’ muslin.’ Ow would that go?”
No doubt Marie’s vigour and vitality would have made anything go. But it appears that the difficulty is not so much in the songs itself as in the business to accompany the song:
“I’ve sung songs,” she says, “swingin’ in a hammick, and leadin’ a dog, and pushin’ a perambulator. They’ll want me to sing standin’ on my ’ead next. The public is funny. I’ve got a beautiful song about a dyin’ soldier but they won’t listen to it. They like:
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Didn’t we ’ave a pantomime At Folkestone for the day. |
They won’t listen to anything ’igh class.”
A great woman, she dominated the ship. Even the captain became merely the person who was navigating Marie Lloyd back to London. The Admiral himself was impressed, and said something to her about his home in England. Marie said:
“Yes, it must be nice livin’ in the country. I’ll look in some time when I’m goin’ past.”
The Admiral, who was the soul of politeness, said:
“You must come and stop with us.” This invitation Marie accepted; and the Admiral, who was a married man, wore a hunted look for the rest of the voyage.
Friday, October 18th—Waiting at Aden to sail. This afternoon a lot of sharks made their appearance, grey-brown shadows lounging lazily along through the water, with their spiteful-looking pilot-fish darting on ahead. They sauntered about, smelling at the floating cabbage-leaves and melon-rinds, and then giving a swirl of their tails and flashing away into the depths.
Marie Lloyd’s entourage were mostly London cockneys, and there was great excitement among them.
“Ow, ’ere’s a shork! ‘Arry, look at the shork! Tell Ted! Ted, ’ere’s a shork! Oh, if we only ’ad an ’ook! My, there’s a big one!”
A grey patriarch lounged up to a floating cabbage-head, gave it a disdainful toss with his snout, and swirled down again out of sight.
“Ho, they ain’t ’ungry! ’E wouldn’t eat that bit of cabbage-leaf!”
A naval officer on board had studied the ways of sharks in many waters; had fried and blistered in the survey ships in Torres Strait, where the sharks waited alongside for the ship’s flotsam and jetsam until they came to be looked upon as family retrievers. To him Ted laid down the law. “See them,” he said, pointing to the pilot-fish, “them’s young shorks.” Hearing the captain say that they were pilot-fish, he ran after the naval officer and told him. “Them ain’t young shorks,” he snid. “Them’s pilot-fish.”
“Thanks,” said the naval officer. “I’m glad you told me.”
Then there was a discussion as to which of the theatricals should go aft to the butcher for a hook and a bit of meat.
“Ted, you’ve seen more shorks than I ’ave, you go.”
Finally, the speaker went himself and came back with a rope, a bit of meat, and a butcher’s hook without any barb to it. This was thrown overboard amid the approving yells and deep-throated cheers of the chorus.
“Sling it out further, can’t yer! There’s one ’ere, a great big one! Bring it up ’ere, Alick, where the water’s comin’ out of the ship.”
“There’s water comin’ out ’ere, too,” said Alick.
The hook was not taken at once, so the back-seat drivers got busy.
“’Aul it up to the top so they can see it! What’s the good of ’avin’ it down where they can’t see it?”
A boat-load of Arabs came along, hoping to do great business with the crowd at the ship’s side; but even the Arabs were cowed by the frenzy with which they were adjured to clear out of that. “Go away! We don’t want nothin’! Go away! Can’t you see we’re fishin’.”
Then a big shark swallowed the bait and hook and about two feet of line. Like a Greek chorus, the supernumeraries began to give advice as to how to haul him up. The shark, however, calmly bit the line in two and disappeared with all the essential parts of the fishing tackle. The chorus burst forth again, “Ow, ’e’s gorn! Why didn’t you ’aul quicker?”
As nobody cared to brave the butcher for another hook, the rest of the drama consisted of explanations and recriminations; until Marie, who (like John Gilpin) had a frugal mind, made her exit, remarking: “I didn’t get that ’ook from the butcher. Whoever got it ’ll ’ave to pay for it.” Most music-hall stars are supposed not to know the meaning of money. But Marie had worked in a rag-factory for ten shillings a week before she got to the hundred pounds a week stage; and she wouldn’t part with even the price of a butcher’s hook if she could see her way to get out of it.
Friday, October 25th—Left the Suez Canal and plugged through the Mediterranean. Passing a town in the distance, the Admiral said:
“That’s Regia.”
But Alick, the lion comique of Marie Lloyd’s company, said pityingly:
“No, that ain’t Regia, that’s Italy.”
We make some signals and a boat comes off, pulled by a lot of comic-opera Italian sailors, who clamour to know who will pay them. They are referred to the consul, but continue to talk like gramophones and to go through Swedish exercises with their arms and shoulders. Then Alick decides to give them a turn, and he says:
“Ecce signor! Bonifacio de Marco de Campagno! Si Si! Bel Giorno! Saveloy de Marconi! Corpo di Baccho!”
The old pilot looks up at Alick, taps his forehead significantly, and goes through the pantomime of drinking something out of a glass. He is the first man who has scored off any of the theatricals.
Saturday, October 26th—Land at Marseilles, and find that there are races on. A large party of us go out in a tram. Marie gives Alick a nudge, and whispers:
“You shout ’ere and then that old Greek’ll ’ave to shout when we go in at the racecourse.”
Alick produces an English Sovereign to pay the fares of the whole party. The conductor grabs it eagerly and hands over a handful of silver in change.
“There you are,” says Alick. “That’s what it is to be an Englishman! They’ll take an English sovereign anywhere in the world.”
Drove to the races through a glorious avenue of trees, with beautiful houses and gardens everywhere. Motor cars fly past, each with a French poodle sitting on the front seat with the wind blowing through his whiskers. We pass a fat Frenchman and his wife in a little donkey-cart, drawn by an infinitesimal donkey. Everybody seems to take the racing as an amusement, while we take it as a severe mental exercise. The air is crisp and clear, and filled with the aromatic smell of dead leaves as we drive through an avenue of sycamores. About half the crowd gets in free; or rather, they sit just outside the course on a grassy slope where they have a splendid view; for it is only divided from the running by a deep ditch. Here they smoke cigarettes and drink light wines and eat things out of baskets, while their children, in hundreds, roll and play on the grass.
Arrived at the racecourse gates, the Greek somehow ducks out of sight, and Alick has to pay the admission money for Marie and himself. Then it turns out that the silver he got from the tram conductor is all bad money. They say all the bad money in the world comes here sooner or later; and this desperado has unloaded the accumulation of weeks on Alick in return for the sovereign. This ruins the day for Marie, who upbraids him bitterly.
“You call yerself a cockney,” she says, “and you go and take a double ’andful of brum money. Never mind, you might shove some of it on to that old Greek tonight when we’re playin’ cards.”
All the public stands were packed, and it was impossible to see anything. But there was any amount of room on an official stand marked defendu, and Marie picked on a young Canadian member of our party to escort her up into this stand. We told her that defendu meant no admittance, but she said she was going up, anyway. “If he tells ’em I’m Marie Lloyd it’ll be all right,” she said.
At the top of the stairs her escort was grappled by a gendarme about the size of a weevil, and the pair of them rolled down the stairs with the gendarme’s little red legs flashing in the air every time he came uppermost. Nor was it a silent film, for the gendarme yelled, à moi mes camarades every time that he hit a fresh step. It took the combined efforts of three gendarmes to secure the Canadian.
The gendarmes were going to put the Canadian in the coop, but he explained that neither he nor his lady friend knew any French, so they embraced him and let the pair of them stop on the stand.
Sitting up there in comfort among the French aristocracy, Marie scorned to notice Alick or the rest of her fellow passengers milling about among the plebeian crowd below. When they came down the stairs, she said to her escort:
“It’s a pity you couldn’t speak French, you could ha’ told ’em who I was.”
“I can speak French all right,” he said. “I’m a French Canadian, and I can speak better French than any of these coves. But you didn’t want to get locked up, did you?”
Marie was so impressed that she fumbled in her bag and gave him a card, marked “Admit one,” to the stalls on the opening night of her season in London.